"In thy mouth it will be as sweet as honey, but it will make thy belly bitter." "Behold, thou must prophesy again before many peoples, nations, tongues and kings."
They say if you repeat a lie often enough, eventually everyone will come to believe it. Another has put it thusly: You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time. But you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Or so the 'ole theory goes. And perhaps 'they're' right. But put a sneer in your voice, a mocking grin upon your cheeks, an expression of utter incredulity in your eyes - and you can surely convince, nay dissuade, anyone of anything. As modern psychology as well as millennia of human history has patently shown.
To apply all the foregoing to a matter of recent moment, note, even (apparently, or rather supposedly, well-deserved) notoreity: 'the end of the world': as of December the 21st, 2012. 9-10 days ago now, depending upon one's hemispheric situation. Only it didn't - that is, end; upon that date. We're still - 'all' - here: upon Planet Earth; in case you haven't noticed. But I'm sure you have. If you were paying (any) attention - which I'm sure you were - even if only out of the corner of your eye; lest anyone else happen to notice; and mock you all the way to Timbuktu. And beyond.
No, of course - unlike Australia's Prime Minister, Julia Gillard - you "simply didn't believe it"; for even a split second. No, really. But - all laughing aside - and well aware that, in heart, if not in actual (physical) fact, I've already lost 80-some per cent of my (non-paying) audience - but were they ever really listening anyhow? - let us go on to examine some of the assumptions underlying those almost inevitable, rather instantaneous, gut-level reactions to such an emotively-charged topic. Especially in terms of what the true meaning could possibly (have) be(en) of some of those so-called prophecies of 'the end of all things as we know it'. 'Things' about which some were so decidedly convinced and which were - apparently - all too conspicuous by their evident, and abject, failure to materialize; in any remote way - whatsoever. That is and will be the task of coming editorial 'pieces'.
So hang on to your seatbelts, folks, you're in for the ride of your life. As we take not ye typical, media-driven and popular culture-cherished, surface, superficial look at a subject that is much more wide-ranging, deep and extensive than many assume, imagine or anticipate. In the process traversing matters, that if they - ultimately - fail to grab hold of, and hold hard and fast, your full, undivided attention, you'll have simply failed to listen properly. 'Nuff said. As our topic goes well beyond the easy-to-ridicule, all too derisible one of date-setting followed by subsequent fast and furious reconfiguring.
"Oh yes," as the Peter Jacksonesque interpretation of J R R Tolkien's Smeagol-Gollum creation might say;
"Oh yes...you'll see...yes, you'll see."
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